


Too sharp in sweetness

by Petra



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Multi, Pre-Canon, Sexuality as obtuse as canon, Yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-15
Updated: 2008-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-18 19:45:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7327987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anyone who doesn't love Geoffrey has no eyes, no ears, and no damned soul, but it's one thing to love him the way the audience does or the way the young company does, and it's another thing entirely to love him the way Oliver most certainly does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too sharp in sweetness

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://carla-scribbles.livejournal.com/profile)[carla_scribbles](http://carla-scribbles.livejournal.com/) and [](http://sageness.livejournal.com/profile)[sageness](http://sageness.livejournal.com/) for listening and making me believe I could do this, to [](http://likethesun2.livejournal.com/profile)[likethesun2](http://likethesun2.livejournal.com/) for a careful beta-reading, and to [](http://brown-betty.livejournal.com/profile)[brown_betty](http://brown-betty.livejournal.com/) for making sure that I didn't commit gross cultural crimes against Canada.

Ellen spends at least as much time hating Oliver as she does loving him, which is about on the average for most of the people she's supposed to care about. She's gone entire days where she hated Geoffrey so much she couldn't bear to look at him -- wouldn't, except for the fucking blocking, sorry -- and weeks where he was the only bright spot apart from the applause in her whole life.

They certainly trump the hell out of her sister, whom she's learned to cordially despise over the years. Family's family, and all unhappy families you can get away from are less unhappy for having you gone, she figures. Better to find something as different from her parents as she can, and god knows Oliver's that. And she had stopped looking so hard for boys who were nothing like the boys she knew at home when she fell into Geoffrey's arms, repeatedly. On cue.

The wild parties were about as far from home as she could get off the stage, until she got so drunk she didn't notice whether the kids making out in the back were two boys, two girls, one of each, or three goats and a chicken -- at which point she could've been home for all any of it mattered. The stage was much better for getting away from where she'd been, queens and lovers whose passion always lasted well past the hangover of larks and nightingales, long enough for the death scene or the final curtain with everyone tucked away in pairs.

She'd never intended to be tucked away in anybody's pair, either. That was too much like shotgun weddings and growing up, both of which she never meant to do -- but there was Geoffrey. And thanks to Oliver, who's never as subtle as he thinks and even less so when he's directing, there was the damned casting. And while it's got her some of the best reviews she may ever get, there's the fact that whenever she plays across from Geoffrey it's like nothing else matters to him except her, and how could she ignore that, exactly? He'd never let her, and she can't even pretend to try. There's acting, and then there's acting.

Whenever it was they stopped acting the first time and started being themselves -- it happened for Ellen after she'd come the first time, and sometime around then for Geoff -- it was clear to her, if not to him, that this wasn't some fling that would end up with shacking up in a trailer somewhere and fifty-two babies and grandbabies and cousins. She's smarter than that, and she's always acting when she's playing the ingénue. Always.

Which makes it all the more embarrassingly fucking perfect when Oliver says, "Romeo," and she's smiling before he even finishes announcing the title, that they're holding down the leads in the flagship production this year. No one has to ask about auditions -- not in this company, not with Oliver's eyes all over Geoffrey like they are. Geoffrey could fall to his damned knees and beg to play Mercutio, and the answer would be a firm and sly and quite possibly evil directorial "No," with an offhanded, "These are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy," to make Geoffrey laugh even as he got up again, defeated by victory.

How many guys would kill to be Romeo in this production? To Ellen's Juliet -- she knew, and Oliver winked at her, so she's certain. She asks Geoff as they read through the scripts on his beaten-up couch, her head in his lap, just how badly he wants to do something else. Be someone else. "Wherefore art thou not Romeo?" isn't what she says, but it's damned tempting. If she could make it properly pentameter, she might try it, but he's so sensitive to that sort of meter issue that it's not worth torturing him over.

"It's not you," he says, and takes her hand, and kisses her until she believes him enough to let him go. "It's not as though we have to reach far to get the lightning passion, that's all. I think we're up for more of a challenge than Verona this year."

Ellen reaches up and squeezes his thigh, then finds the zipper on his jeans -- as worn as his couch, and twice as comfortable. "We can make it challenging."

His smile would be scandalized if it were almost any other play -- but not this one, not Geoff. "Or we could try acting."

She laughs at him and opens his pants. "If you want to do things the hard way." He strokes her hair and lets her slide off the couch. "A little Method never hurt anyone, though."

"Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover!" he says, and loses the lines of the speech to a groan as she licks him, finds it again -- damn him -- and fights to keep it until his breath comes too raggedly to keep the verse sounding anything but staggered, labored, nowhere near the death scene, when he comes, shaking with it, in her mouth.

She rubs her hand over her lips and gets back onto the couch in time to catch him as he mock-swoons into her arms. "It's not really your role," she says.

"Not this year," Geoff says, and pulls her down into another kiss. "Not when I have far more rash, unadvis'd, and sudden loves."

"I am not," Ellen protests, but with his hand up her skirt, tugging her panties down, she's not at all sure she's telling the truth.

It's easier to tell Oliver the truth when he gives her an eyebrow-waggle the next day. "How many times did he have you over the balcony, ah, go over the balcony?" he asks, and she knows him more than well enough to know he's hardly seeing her at all when he asks it.

"Not even once," she says.

Because it doesn't count that Geoff said, "A rose by any other name --" and she grabbed him by the ears. It doesn't.

"Really!" Oliver makes a moue of disappointment, as if he'd expected her to give a full rundown of scenes and positions. "I could recast you as the Nurse if you thought it would give you an edge."

She rolls her eyes; the Nurse is eons in her future. "No, and don't stuff me into trousers as Tybalt, either."

"King of Cats, indeed." Oliver shakes his head. "Though if our Romeo is too busy with you to rehearse --"

Ellen laughs and turns away from him. "Too busy rehearsing to do damn near anything else, more like."

She means the wreck that each of their kitchens has individually become, even this early in the production, and the vast remains of pizza boxes that will hold empty court by the time they open, not to mention the laundry, not to mention all manner of other domestic chores that she never remembers when she's too busy playing at being in love and being in love.

Oliver puts his arm around her shoulders and leans in confidingly. "I could make him First Musician for you," he says, "but it would be a waste."

"You would never," Ellen says, swatting at his hand. "Not if you could have anyone else in the world."

"If it left him more time for love offstage --" Oliver waves a hand, and the wry twist of his smile says more than enough.

"You'd only break his heart," Ellen says, and kisses Oliver on the cheek before she twirls away from him.

Oliver acknowledges this with an inclination of his head. "And make the whole thing symmetric, for once? I'd say it was worth it, but I'd be lying."

That's enough to make Ellen bite her lip -- for Oliver, for Geoffrey, because anyone who doesn't love Geoffrey has no eyes, no ears, and no damned soul, but it's one thing to love him the way the audience does or the way the young company does, and it's another thing entirely to love him the way Oliver most certainly does. It's not the same as acting with him, and it's enough to make Ellen jealous as hell sometimes, the way Geoffrey listens to Oliver's notes and takes them to heart. She can make him better sometimes, find new ways of doing the same scene, but when Oliver has something to say about Geoffrey's acting, there's nothing else in the theatre but the two of them until it's time to run the scene again.

If -- she doesn't worry about Geoffrey like that, not anymore, not with Oliver -- but if --

Ellen's sure she has nothing at all to worry about, and she's absolutely terrible at sharing. She was absolutely terrible at sharing in kindergarten, when they played dress-up, and she's only got worse with age. It's ridiculous -- and she knows it -- to think of Geoffrey's skill and art and beauty as hers, because they're all his and he'll share them with anyone he damned well pleases, but the way he kisses her -- she won't share that with anyone.

There are days when she hates having to share the way he acts, even though for fuck's sake that's his life and denying him the chance to do it would be like cutting off his legs. She knows better than that, especially when she stops to think about what she wants from each of them. Geoffrey is hers, hah, as if she has some lasting claim on him. As if the way he courts her Juliet isn't how he'd court anyone else's.

She makes an effort not to worry about Geoffrey, especially that time that Oliver fires Bernardo, or rather Fred. What someone who's as homophobic as Fred's doing in the theatre is past Ellen's understanding, but Fred gets so nervous from Tybalt's flirting -- it's been subtle enough to play over the kids' heads, that's for sure -- that he fucks up the duel and starts yelling, wild with his fear for his own pathetic masculinity.

Oliver stops the whole thing with a directorial roar and gets to the bottom of the issue right then and there. Other people might drag the offenders into an office and ream them out there, but this is theatre, this is passion, and Tybalt's holding onto his rapier like it's the only thing keeping him from being gay-bashed, which it just was but isn't anymore.

"Learn to take a compliment," Oliver tells Fred, his voice contemptuous. "And -- you damned idiot -- learn that being open to new fucking experiences is what makes you alive. If you're not willing to feel, to contemplate the possibility of feeling, you're not the right man for this part or this theatre." He picks up Bernardo's discarded rapier and beckons to one of the fresh young things. "Are you afraid for your virtue?" he asks.

"No, Mr. Welles," the kid says, his eyes flicking from the rapier to Oliver's face.

"You're promoted," Oliver says, and hands him the sword.

Trust Oliver to make the whole thing into a dare. Ellen doesn't think he's conscious of it -- doesn't want to think he's even aware of the speculative look on Geoffrey's face.

Some men, some men, cannot pass a challenge. Lady, get a grip, take a breath, and smile at him.

"Let's have a fifteen-minute break," Oliver says, and the stage manager makes it an order.

Ellen grabs Geoffrey's arm before he gets far and holds onto him like he's about to charge into Oliver's office and ask him to bend him over the damn desk, which he's probably not. She's dated enough theatre boys who figured out somewhere between the first and tenth time they had sex that they're gay that she's sure Geoffrey's not gay, but he might very well be bisexual, and if Oliver had the chance to offer right now -- no.

It's not that she wouldn't be able to forgive them -- she can understand wanting them, though she's made an effort to get over that hero-worship crush on Oliver, what with him being queerer than Tybalt. It's that if they ever did it without her she'd cut their balls off.

"Let's grab a coffee," she says to Geoffrey, who's watching Oliver leave with the attentiveness he should give her. Isn't she his -- Juliet? "I need a smoke," she says, and that gets his ear, for whatever reason.

"Okay," he says, and gives her a crooked smile. "I'll come with you."

Being outside doesn't clear her head enough, or fast enough. Geoffrey, damn him and damn his good theatre habits, was listening to Oliver like always, and just as she says, "I never thought he was very good anyhow --"

Geoffrey, being Geoffrey, says, "Oliver had a good point."

Ellen is too smart to ask, "When?" because she knows, and she's not interested in making him paraphrase it for her. She says, "I guess, if that's the kind of thing you like."

"I never actually tried," he says, and she smiles and kisses him.

"We could if you wanted to. They make toys for that."

He groans, not the response she wanted but not so bad either. "Don't remind me. In university, Darren --" she rolls her eyes at him, another Darren story "-- did a staging of Twelfth Night where Viola-as-Cesario had a huge strap-on."

"He would," Ellen says, and tries to block out the mental image. The problem with that is that the only other image she has right now is of Oliver fucking Geoffrey, gentle and demanding that he feel every second of it, every slide.

She can see the way Geoffrey's eyes would get wide, the way he'd flush, and the way he'd do everything Oliver asked and then some.

It's not something she wants to think about now, so she stubs out her cigarette and says, "It's cold out here."

Geoffrey gives her his jacket and holds the door for her. Normally that would tick her off, but she needs to see him focused on her for a few minutes, so that's fine. Let him be chivalrous, she'll be a feminist later. "Which scene did you want to run?" he asks as they head back to the theatre. He's usually the one who wants to spend extra time on it -- every second they're not actually getting paid to practice, eating, or making love except for the times they make love to the tune of "Swear not by the -- oh, fuck, Geoff -- moon..."

"It was the lark," she says, and Oliver's blocking doesn't call for Geoffrey to take her in his arms and hold her, and the fifth kiss is totally ad lib, but she's not complaining.

Rehearsal keeps her mind on the moment enough that she doesn't think about Oliver's challenge until they get to new-Bernardo's speeches. Geoffrey knows the blocking and the play well enough that he makes a few suggestions, and Oliver takes a seat next to Ellen in the theatre.

"If he wasn't such a perfect actor, I'd make him direct more," Oliver says, softly enough that it doesn't reach the stage.

"I'm not sure you could make him do it," Ellen says, and tries to stop thinking about Oliver naked, teaching Geoffrey everything he knows about something else.

"Maybe not, but it would be a hell of a fun thing to try." Oliver gives her a tilted smile. "And think of how it would make the others fume."

The only people who make less sense to Ellen in the theatre than some of the directors are the dressers, and that's because she can't imagine putting up with the shit she puts them through. Better to think about the time she threw Portia's gown on the floor at fifteen minutes and burst into tears, anyway, than Oliver's mouth on the back of Geoff's neck. She's getting jealous of them and they haven't done anything, damn them. This is ridiculous.

Ellen shrugs. "We need him here, though. He needs the audience."

"Ah, well." Oliver stands up as new-Bernardo falters a line. "From the top," he says, taking the reins again.

She usually loves watching them together, but she can't manage it today. Her filthy mental images keep getting in the way. She goes into the green room instead and spends a little quality time putting herself into the picture.

If Oliver ever had the balls to ask -- and Geoffrey felt dared enough to say yes -- no, not that way. If she talked Geoffrey into it, as an adventure, added her dare to Oliver's, then they'd be hers all the way through. Then every kiss they shared, she'd watch and not hate them at all, because the next one would be for her, one way or the other. And Oliver might -- would, it's her porno -- touch her, too, appreciate her hips and her flat belly for what they are.

Even inside her own head, though, she can't keep them focused on her for long. Not with the way Oliver would -- does look at Geoffrey, and the way Geoffrey turns to that like a sunflower. That's when she knows she can't let Geoffrey go through with it, not really, not anywhere where it counts. In her imagination, every time he shivers it's for her -- her Geoffrey, the only one she gets all of, for always. Even Oliver is hers, there, and the way he closes his eyes when he pushes his way into Geoffrey -- and Geoffrey's gasp at the sensation, the daring of it all --

And then, in the dream of them, she kisses Geoffrey and makes him stop focusing on Oliver so much, stop losing himself in the stupid fucking challenge, and really see her. She can make him remember she's there, make him not care -- but he would, if they were really there, really doing it like that.

If it were real -- she wants Geoffrey done with his practice already, and if they don't chase him out of the theatre bodily at the last call he'll be late. She wants him in her, wants to fuck him with all of the love and fury and joy she can see in him. She sees it all with her eyes closed, right now, and she doesn't want it to be the imaginary Oliver causing it all.

But if she ever said that -- even the dream-Oliver laughs at her and gives her that smile over Geoffrey's shoulder that lets her know he knows who's whose around here, and that's --

The door opens, and Geoff comes in. "Ah, finally," he says, and bows to her with a flamboyant flourish. "Permit me to escort you to dinner."

Ellen pushes away the imaginary Oliver, who's looking terribly disappointed, and promises herself that the next time she's anywhere but New Burbage, she'll buy the equipment she needs to dare Geoffrey to greater heights.

It'll be fine, just so long as it's before Oliver manages to get around to it.

 

*

Oliver is quite certain that he appreciates Ellen in her own right, and that her skills are very nearly as amazing as Geoffrey's. The trouble is that when he lets himself get carried away -- or drunk -- he wants her to stop existing, or move to Zimbabwe, or discover her lesbianism.

Really, he's most in favor of the latter, and could set her up with some smashing girls if she needed him to. It would be the best possible reason for her to dump Geoffrey and leave him sorely in need of affection, comfort, and the sort of cosseting that Oliver is prepared to admit, when he's sober, that he's not actually capable of lavishing on anything other than a production. Which is why he's perfect for Geoffrey, and vice versa, if he does say so himself: the only way to get Geoffrey to sit still long enough to be loved properly is to direct him to do so and threaten him with an audience sooner or later.

And, while technically it's historically correct to do Romeo and Juliet without a female Juliet -- or stage Hamlet sans a lady for Ophelia -- New Burbage audiences might well object if Oliver made a habit of the casting, or did more than one such experiment once a decade or so. Therefore it's just as well that Ellen's there, and that she's as good as she is -- very, very good indeed, and he probably doesn't tell her that often enough -- but.

But it would be absolutely splendid if only Geoffrey weren't so damned in love with her. On occasion, Oliver thanks his lucky stars that it'll be some years yet before they do Much Ado About Nothing, because he can bear Helena's swooning over a man who doesn't deserve her or even Desdemona's ludicrous devotion, but to hear Beatrice -- by whom he means Ellen -- swearing night after night that she is weary of her Benedick, only to be won back and marry the bastard again -- Oliver would find that unutterably tiresome, and not from any fault of the play.

He's never heard any of the usual suspects around town say word one about Geoffrey's roving eye -- the impossible man -- nor has he ever caught him ogling anyone more macho than Orsino's sweetheart.

A man can damned well dream, though, and he's not so old nor so ugly yet that he's lost all his charm. Besides -- and he isn't thinking of it as a quid pro quo, nor even a what have you done for me lately -- Ellen isn't in charge of the next season. She can only give him the dialogue and the love interest; Oliver can make him king or fool, fairy or prince. Particularly prince, as in Denmark, and for a good long moment there Oliver can pretend the light in Geoffrey's eyes is Geoffrey falling in love with him.

It's indubitably Geoffrey falling in love with Hamlet, who is much more trouble -- Oliver's certain of that -- and who must be less fun in bed.

Unless, of course, one has a live-in Ophelia with whom to speak of country matters, sans the o, in which case Oliver allows himself to feel entirely generous until the first read-through, when he feels entirely blessed. He couldn't ask for a better Hamlet, nor a more passionately enamored Ophelia. It's the third time through before he's more than peripherally aware of the other actors, and that's hardly fair to them. They're masters of their craft, certainly, but they're not in love with love and the play and each other, so they blend into the background rather.

It's worse -- and Oliver means it's better, he does -- than watching them playing at Capulet and Montague, because they loved those words, but they love this play, and it makes all the difference in the world. All the difference out of the world, because that's where they are when they're going at it: Elsinore, a world away from Canada.

They spend their time drunk on it -- there's no smell of alcohol around them, nor pot, and they're not really foolish enough to try anything stronger, surely. After the first dress rehearsal, Ellen staggers out of Geoffrey's dressing room and into Oliver's arms.

"The fair Ophelia," Oliver says, and her smile is hazy.

If she had just stumbled out of an opium den, the smoke would still be insufficient to cover the reek of sex on her.

Oliver hasn't fucked a woman, or even given it the good old college try, since his first production, ahem years ago, when he was soldier scenery and one of his fellow lineless wonders let Oliver suck him off. There wasn't any point in pretending girls were the thing after that, not where he was -- on the boards, on his knees, in something like heaven.

But Ellen -- is Ophelia, and she's covered in Geoffrey's sweat -- no woman has ever smelled like that, and it's not as though Oliver has ever wandered into Geoffrey's dressing room to make sure his costumes were in order after a show more than once or twice per production. So it's not exactly the same as Nancy's mum's Morris Minor, is it, when Oliver glances behind her to be sure that Geoffrey's not following her, his glorious doublet all unbraced -- and kisses her.

Somewhere the god of aging theatre queens is laughing his ass off.

Ellen doesn't pull away and smack him, and praise be to all the evil demons that look after what we really want in this world, she tastes like Geoffrey, and she doesn't sound or feel like him when she throws her arms around Oliver's neck, but it hardly matters.

Oliver's not sure how much he wants her-as-her, how much he wants her-as-Ophelia, and how much he wants, somehow, to make Geoffrey magically appear, tap him on the shoulder, and kiss him instead of Ellen. Given Geoffrey's bent or lack thereof, however, it's much more likely that if Geoffrey shows up like Hamlet Senior, he'll tap Oliver on the shoulder and punch his lights out, which would be thoroughly justified and nearly impossible to explain away.

"My office," he says to Ellen, and it's another chance for her to say "No," or "Not now," or "Are you insane?" or even "Aren't you gay?"

He's braced for all of them and hasn't got an answer for the last other than "Yes, dammit, but." Bisexuality isn't so much wishy-washy as overly optimistic in his case, but Nancy of the Morris Minor didn't have smudged lipstick from sucking Geoffrey off, and she never shut his office door and pressed her finger to her lips, or grinned as though she knew how badly and madly he wanted her.

This isn't what he wished for, he's sure of that, and he's just as sure Ellen doesn't want him just for himself. But -- but. He can give Geoffrey Hamlet and Hal; he wants to keep him until he can play Lear without someone else's beard.

This is no casting couch, and yet Ellen is kissing him hard, promising him with her hand on his zipper that someday she'll be Gertrude for him, someday her Cleopatra will outdo Helen for ships launched no matter how long it takes to play her, and -- she's leaning back on the desk, and it's not as natural as stupid straight boys seem to think to slide inside her and swear silently that she belongs in this theatre, under his direction, until she's too old to play even the creakiest Dowager Duchess.

It's been a long time, but she's not just wet, and he has traumatic, vivid memories of foreplay. Ellen -- sweet Ellen -- is drenched as Ophelia in the river.

Oliver works out exactly why when he takes his next deep breath, and it's all he can do not to come already.

If he closes his eyes and buries his face in her hair, he can't actually manage to imagine her hands on his hips, pulling him down, are Geoffrey's even though he wants to. But he can damned well imagine Geoffrey in the room, giving them both some speech or other about timing -- and Oliver knows he's off, knows he should be giving Ellen something different. "Work with her," Geoffrey says in his head, and it's the only thing that could possibly induce him to make an effort to find her clitoris.

She moans when he does, an inarticulate "God, yes," that's as good as any monologue.

Oliver's feeling rather more like it's time to resolve into a dew already, but Geoffrey in his head is laughing at him and saying, "Pace, pace, pace," and Ellen squeezes his hips. Geoffrey says, "Stay with her; give her something to play off. You're here because she wants you to be, aren't you? No use pretending you're carousing 'til the second cock, not right now." And that squeeze -- that smack, Ellen, you naughty thing -- isn't Geoffrey's hand either, but he wants it to be so badly he can taste it.

Oliver doesn't -- doesn't, damn it, moan Geoffrey's name into Ellen's shoulder, but it's a close thing, and when he tries distracting her from his faux pas with a little more rubbing, she shudders around him.

Better than he's ever managed before, but then he's never had someone holding his hand through a performance like this one.

"Bravo," Geoffrey says, and his smile is better than a standing ovation.

"Fuck, yes," Ellen says, and kisses him hard.

Oliver had managed to forget, in the waking swoon of this madcap seduction, how much she tastes of semen.

He'll never bring himself to admit to her that that's what tips him over the edge, but there's so much he won't say to her -- or Geoffrey -- about all of this that it's another line in the oeuvre.

Ellen pats his cheek. "My legs are cramping," she says. "Sorry."

He pulls out and fumbles for tissues, then offers them to her while he keeps his eyes firmly on her familiar if flushed face, and away from any sight or thought of the rest of her. "Well," he says.

"I'd better go," she says, and then she gives him a look that makes him resolve never to cast her as an ingénue again. "Do you have any whiskey in your desk?"

He does, and he wants it at least as badly as she must, but if they're keeping this light -- and is it a secret as well? -- then he can give her the bottle and find another for himself. "Here," he says, but he keeps it just out of reach. "But --"

Ellen is no stranger to deeply meaningful business, bless her. "I'll tell him," she says, with that firmness of purpose that she abandons entirely to hand out flowers. "But -- not tonight."

Oliver nods. "Do you -- will he --" he shakes his head. "No, ignore the maunderings of an old man."

"I'm listening. I always listen to your notes." She kisses him again, takes the bottle, and starts for the door. "Just don't push me too hard. It's been a little rough, lately."

"Break it to him gently," Oliver asks, and Ellen leaves without acknowledging him.

*

"Geoffrey Tennant?" says the new orderly -- whatever her name is, Geoffrey doesn't really care. She's replacing Ted, and Ted was nice but vapid. He's getting married, he said.

This new girl says, "He's an actor? Awfully pretty, eh? Bet he's gay."

Geoffrey laughs -- inside his head, because he doesn't want any more sedatives, thank you, and he knows the difference between inside voice and outside voice almost all the time now. If he were gay, his life would have been so easy. No Ellen, no insane, ridiculous adoration of a woman who was just going to fuck him over and leave him when he thought he had everything he could ever want. And without Ellen, he had no Ophelia, and without Ophelia, he couldn't be Hamlet, and without Hamlet, where was Geoffrey Tennant, then? On the posters in the lobby, but not onstage.

Not on stage at all, once he found the trapdoor. He intends to stay at the bottom of the trapdoor for the rest of forever. He's not sure whether he'll become a porter or a gravedigger, an apothecary or a priest, but whatever he does he won't go on the stage.

The only way he knows he has a soul is that he can't stand the thought of becoming a teacher and listening to generations of fine Canadian youth butchering the words and works he loves so well. So that's out.

As if he knows how to do anything other than quote and emote.

If he can stand to get near a theatre, someday he'll direct. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

Sometimes he thinks things three times just to prove to himself that he really is still mad.

Sometimes he laughs out loud at things no one else hears, like the little orderly girl who wants to know if he's gay. Oh, no, little girl, because if he were, you see, not that you see because you probably wouldn't even know the subjunctive if it bit you on your candy-striped ass, if he were gay he'd be fucking married to a soulless bastard and raising his soulless imaginary babies: Hamlet, Hal, Henries with and without number.

Enough stupid men have tried to get him in bed, but only the important ones could ever have succeeded. The ones who wanted him not merely because he's brilliant -- which he doesn't know if he'll ever be again, now that he'll never touch the stage, never act, never ever -- but because they liked something else in him.

Which is why he broke up with Oliver after their first date, in that wonderful land where he's gay which he's not, really. Oliver only ever saw him as an actor -- he knows that -- and if Oliver could see him now, O how these eyes would weep. Or his eyes would. Probably.

Not that it was a date. No, dear sweet gay Geoffrey let himself be swept off of his feet while he was playing Sebastian in Illyria -- walk on, get laid, get married -- and fucked Oliver in Oliver's stately ship of a bed, or, really, let's be honest, let Oliver fuck him. At least twice.

Wherever Ellen was in this never-place, she was probably laughing at the innocent kid who let himself care about his heartless, cruel director. Because even gay Geoffrey must love unwisely and all too well, because whatever makes him gay can't stop him from being Geoffrey.

Being Geoffrey, he must have loved Ellen just a little bit. As much as the real Oliver -- more vicious, more underhanded even than the one who kissed gay Geoffrey in front of the cast and patted him on his abused little ass -- ever loved Ellen.

And did they ever have a second date, these men who saw more in each other's eyes than the promise of great plays, great direction, great works? If they did, more power to them, because that means they had a first date -- which Geoffrey, knowing Oliver and worrying about himself, really does doubt. A second dirty weekend, with breaks for matinees and performances -- the show must go on, Geoffrey darling, limp your way through it with aching thighs -- and Geoffrey has had that weekend, too. Not with Oliver, but with Ellen.

Ellen, Ellen, Ellen. Possibly nine times over, because that's what madness really feels like. Possibly he could say her name until he falls asleep and wake up saying it, and it still wouldn't express what he thinks of her, how crazy she makes him, or how utterly fucking wonderful she used to sometimes be.

As for dear gay Geoffrey and Oliver -- if Oliver kept him for more than one or two nights, or one or two flings, or one or two decades, which seems somewhat plausible, because it's not as though everyone throws himself at Oliver, and he's always been ready to catch Geoffrey at the slightest sign of interest -- surely they shacked up for a while in their nonexistent place, sticky and sodomitical and thoroughly, Geoffrey hopes, happy.

Until Ellen, because Ellen is worse than entropy, and even gay Geoffrey must have loved her for the time it took to be her Romeo and the energy it took to want her Perdita, and if Oliver trusted imaginary Geoffrey with Hamlet, then how much worse would it have been to adore and torture and break her Ophelia without loving her back together every night?

Hamlet must have broken them there, too, in nowhere land where Oliver gave notes with his hand on the small of Geoffrey's back, but maybe in nowhere land Geoffrey fucked Ellen and told Oliver the third night in, broke his heart and sent him away aching.

Not -- not --

Not that Hamlet couldn't go on without Oliver, god knows, because once it was set in motion they hardly needed him. He had his ideas, and some of them were good, but after the previews -- after the opening, when the audience and the stage and the shining perfect everything -- Oliver could have been abducted by aliens, never to be seen again, and everything would have gone on without him. Maybe if Oliver had disappeared, Geoffrey wouldn't be sitting in a quiet white room, far away from everybody, thinking about the gay boy he's not and how much he hopes that that Geoffrey, at least, is happy. Happily ever after with his Ellen, if he's not just gay -- Jack shall have his Jill -- or happily ever after with Oliver, who must be better at forgiving this kind of bullshit than Geoffrey. Or happily ever after with both of them, if it's a particularly fair and foul-minded sort of universe that allows people what they might like, rather than just what they need.

Geoffrey would far rather believe of his nonexistent queer self that he does Oliver's laundry and makes sure Ellen's bras end up in the right drawer than that he fell in love with Darren in college. Heaven forfend that a simple change of orientation would make him that pathetically stupid, though -- surely he's still Geoffrey. Surely he still has taste, even if he doesn't have enough taste to turn down that predictable, flippant-sincere offer of a blowjob.

That one was hard to turn down for straight, real Geoffrey, but only because it would've meant Darren would shut up for a few minutes at a time.

No, no, honesty is important, as the therapists say, not that he'll ever tell a therapist how long he's been sitting here thinking about what he would have done if he were gay. If Fortune had made him her fool not for the love of Juliet, but -- Mercutio? No, Oliver was never that gay in the not classical, but classic, sense. Darren, though, Darren was born to play Mercutio, if only he had the sense to stay on the stage and out of the director's chair.

So, to be perfectly honest, Geoffrey would've enjoyed the hell out of getting Darren to shut the fuck up. But also, because however far beyond the bounds of propriety Darren's genius for madness takes him, it is a form of genius in its own right, and Geoffrey has an exceedingly begrudging respect for that. And also a type, on the nights when the drugs make him so honest he wants to kill himself. A type: unique.

Unique as in genius, as in beauty, as in driven passion, as in the inability to ever relax or say "Good enough." As in Ellen, Ellen, Ellen, as in Oliver, as in, damn him and his maniacally stupid concepts in stage design that sometimes achieve greatness but only when the goal is absurdity, Darren fucking Nichols.

It's too bad gay Geoffrey doesn't live in this universe and isn't someone else, or Geoffrey would date him. If Geoffrey were gay. They'd kill each other within a year, but it would be a hell of a year, and they'd manage the best Comedy of Errors that New Burbage or anywhere had ever seen or will ever see in the history of all theatre ever. But it would all end in tears, and then silence, not least because Geoffrey is, not to put too fine a point on it, straight.

Gay Geoffrey is far, far better off raising parakeets with Oliver. Bisexual Geoffrey -- isn't that a joke, honestly, they say everyone is but how could they ever know? -- is better off with both of the scourges of New Burbage. They must have phenomenal sex, wherever the hell they are, and maybe it helps balance the world-shattering fights. Geoffrey doesn't trust any Oliver anywhere not to want to break him and remake him every other day, and he doesn't trust any Ellen anywhere not to run off with anyone whom she thinks might get her a leg up along with her leg over.

But the sex --

The Ellen in that nonexistent place is the luckiest bitch Geoffrey can imagine -- not just because she's got him, and fuck knows the Ellen he used to love, still loves, can't stand the thought of, is long past thinking of herself as lucky because she had him. But Ellen needs to be the center of attention, and if she spends fewer than three nights a week in some kind of everybody-loves-her sandwich, straining and flushed, she probably sulks.

Marital strife in Paradise? In Elysium? It's possible, isn't it? Probable, even with excellent sex and excellent acting, because they all are exactly who they are. Oliver never loved anyone nearly enough to hate them as much as Geoffrey hates Ellen. And Oliver. Ellen only loves herself that much.

Maybe they work better together than apart in bed, as they do on the stage, but Geoffrey refuses to speculate further on the sex he might have had with both of them. There's just too much wrong there to hope that it could all come right in the end.

Besides which, he's busy hating them.

The worst part is the hate doesn't stop him from loving them and wishing --

No, he doesn't wish they were here, watching him stare at the blank, blank, blank wall. He wishes he were staring at the fourth wall, through it, out into the sea of anonymous, beautiful faces that he could still touch with a glance, a word, a gesture.

They broke his fucking heart, and he'll never forgive them for that, but more than that, they stopped him from being who he really is. Who Geoffrey Tennant really was, at any rate, because how can he possibly be an actor sitting in the funny farm, quiet and mad and lonely as a cloud? There's no one to act for here except the new orderly, and she won't appreciate his excellent impression of someone who gives a shit, someone who can stand up straight and doesn't stick spoons up his nose. Someone, god help them both, who can tell a hawk from a Fanshaw.

He's not mad anymore, or if he is, it's not in the same way he was when he came in. Imagining yourself married to the people who fucked you over can't possibly count as insane; enough people are actually in that scenario that it's practically a requirement for sanity in and of itself. He's not married to them, he's not, and someday he'll even get over them.

Someday -- he's sure of it -- when he's back on some stage, somewhere, even if it's backstage. Someday when he's himself again, he won't have to hate them so much he can't stop thinking of them.

Maybe he'll move to Australia.

Maybe he'll stay where he is, but not exactly where he is, because while there are plenty of plays one could direct in the nuthouse, it's not an activity designed to make the headshrinkers think you're wholly well: emotion, commanding other people, and what if they had to cry? It would all be over. And the audience is beyond imagining, even with well-muscled ushers armed with straitjackets.

The general public is not much better behaved, on the whole, but at least there's some hope for them. Geoffrey has more hope for them than he does for himself, which isn't saying a lot. Someday he'll make them love him again, though, even if they don't realize that the emotion in the speech or this piece of business or that blocking is his touch, putting the actors where they need to be.

Someday someone will love him again. Until then, he has the blank white wall, and it's better company than a lot of people he could name, and more conducive to becoming whatever he wants to project upon it. Things could be worse.  



End file.
